Television viewers last Saturday witnessed violence committed by pan-blue demonstrators, who insanely attacked police officers maintaining order on Ketagalan Boulevard with slingshots and sticks and threw Molotov cocktails, fire extinguishers and rocks. Journalists documenting the event also fell victim to the crowd's brutality. Our law does not tolerate such barbarism. We urge judicial authorities to speed up their investigation so that the outlaws who commit-ted crimes that night can be put behind bars.
According to police accounts, dozens of citizens and law enforcement officers were injured that day, including a dozen photographers and reporters, some of them women. These brutal beatings startled television audiences. By yesterday, Taipei police had gathered concrete evidence showing that at least two protesters who encouraged other demonstrators to attack the police and journalists belong to organized crime groups.
In this light, we can see that some gangs had been waiting for an opportune moment to take action in order to benefit from the political turmoil. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Lin Feng-cheng (
In retrospect, the disorder in the wake of the presidential election can be traced back to the Taiwanese media. News organizations did not act according to professional ethics, but instead reported inflated opinion polls conducted with specific political motives. On election day, in their competition for ratings, many TV news programs reported fraudulent vote figures showing that the pan-blue camp led by a large margin. The reported results were completely inconsistent with those reported by the Central Election Commission (
In addition, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Taiwan upholds not only democracy but also the rule of law. Election conflicts among different parties are not something new for us, but have been occurring ever since the implementation of local autonomy. Therefore, if Lien and Soong are not satisfied with the election results, they should seek a solution through the judicial system. That's what opposition leaders should do, rather than repeating untrue accusations. Nor should they attempt to force President Chen Shui-bian's (
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
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